The present exemplary embodiments disclosed herein relate generally to the classification of documents. They find particular application in conjunction with the generation of image anchor templates used to categorize documents, and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it is to be appreciated that the present exemplary embodiments are also amenable to other like applications.
When dealing with a large number of documents, it is often desirable to quickly classify the documents. Typical solutions work by matching one or more manually generated image anchor templates to target images corresponding to documents. If the image anchor templates sufficiently match a target image, the classification of the corresponding document is known.
One important aspect of such solutions is that they depend upon the ability of the image anchor templates to discriminate between documents of different classes. Consequently, image anchor templates are chosen for their discriminative power. That is to say, image anchor templates are chosen for their ability to differentiate between documents of different classes.
In choosing image anchor templates, typical solutions rely upon an operator to manually select the image anchor templates to discriminate between target images of a particular class and target images of other classes. Put another way, these solutions rely upon the skill and intuition of an operator to generate the image anchor templates. However, this reliance on an operator may lead to sub-par image anchor templates and/or a waste of time and resources due to the difficulty of picking image anchor templates.
Namely, it is difficult for an operator to predict how a particular image anchor template will match to different target images. Even more, it is difficult for an operator to find image anchor templates that are not likely to match target images of a different class. This is especially true if documents to be considered have fixed and variable parts and/or share parts with documents of other classes. Such is the case in institutional forms, letter heads, invoices, etc. As a result of these difficulties, an operator will generally have to undergo a trial and error process that takes time and resources.
In view of the deficiencies noted above, there exists a need for improved systems and/or methods of generating image anchor templates. The present application contemplates such new and improved systems and/or methods which may be employed to mitigate the above-referenced problems and others.